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Thursday, November 26, 2015

Life as a Noun

I used to hate diagramming sentences in English class. I could always get the subject and verb right. Easy peasy. But when it came time to drawing lines thisaway and thataway.....ugh. I was terrible at distinguishing between prepositions and predicates and things that dangle. Adverbs and adjectives were a little easier to discover. Is it any wonder I am the run on sentence queen?

But I wonder....

What would the world be like if there were only nouns in our vocabulary. If the only words we used were object words, like

Would there be a word for Love or Joy or Compassion? How would our lives be different if we lived like we were all just nouns with no verbs or participle phrases or prepositional phrases or run on sentences?

Some of us do live more on the noun side than a complicated sentence diagram. Our lives live in the mundane and are very content to be there, thank you very much. Change - a verb telling a noun I need to move - makes a noun feel very uncomfortable.

Nouns are easy. They are one word. They are easy to spot. The most complicated thing about a noun is if it's dressed up in PROnoun garb or is wearing its PROPERnoun clothes. That's about the excitement a noun has in its job description.

Nouns are happy right where they're at, but what if we all just lived our lives as a noun?

Boy. Girl. Kiss. Child. Boys. Girls.

Wait a minute. Wait just a cotton picking minute! Where's the juice? Where are the details. How did one plus one make two then three, four and a gaggle of kids? What would our life be like if we only lived like nouns?

Some of us are living like nouns while others of us are living like a fragmented sentence structure, with no clear subject, predicate, verb or dangling participle to our name. Our lives are one continuous run on sentence with no beginning middle or end in sight.

Which are you?

Do you have some verbs and adjectives next to you, breathing life into your Noun world? Or if you were a diagrammed sentence would there be lines jutting out all over the place trying to find a spot for all your extras?

Jesus has made you a noun, but He's called you to live like a verb with some beautiful adverbs and adjectives to describe what he's called you to do and to be. Like: live courageously, love deeply, forgive abundantly, grieve freely.

You are not meant to live like only a bump on a log. You are meant to be a verb on the log, providing nourishment to all the other bumps around you.

Live like a verb and throw some adjectives and adverbs into the mix. Get daring and don't fret if you end on a preposition. Don't worry about what dangles and runs forever, your work is not being graded, I promise you that! Come on, get up you Noun. Stretch out that scrunched up faith, put on some clothes that end in "ly" and MOVE!

My First Book!

Part one of my adult life I was a Navy wife and Mom. Part two of my life I am a now retired Navy wife, still a mom but now am a registered nurse and a grandmother. Words rattle around in my head trying to find a way out. I'm not a scholar or a theologian, and the only letters after my name are R.N. I like studying the Bible and wish I could make a living just looking up original Hebrew and Greek words. It's not my desire to change your opinion, your doctrine, or your political affiliation through this blog. I hope to get you thinking about life and its challenges in a way you hadn't looked at before. And maybe, somewhere along the way, let me introduce you to the Jesus I've come to know. All pictures are mine. Enjoy but don't use without permission.